Minific Monday prompt: Outlaw Queen Librarian AU (if you're not comfortable with OQ though SQ is just as good!!! thank you, have a lovely day!)
Regina paged through the newest James Patterson release and sighed. There was definitely a pattern to his storytelling, and she could predict the endings with a fair amount of accuracy, but for some reason she simply couldn’t stop reading his books. This one, she could already tell, was going to be a hard one to put down, and she looked forward to spending the next few afternoons curled up in the sunroom with a cup of coffee in hand and a pair of slippers on her feet. She turned around just in time to spot a man nearby tucking a book under his jacket. Outraged by the blatant theft, she stalked over and grabbed his wrist.
He smiled at her, and all at once the fury boiling inside her quelled. “Stealing from the rich, my good woman.”
“Put it back, or I’ll report you.”
He lifted his hand, dragging hers with it. “You have very pretty hands. It may be presumptuous of me, but I’m expecting that you don’t work a job that requires much elbow grease.”
She released her grasp in favor of glaring at him. “I’m a lawyer.”
“I’m a librarian, Ms. Lawyer, and the library doesn’t get much funding. When something breaks, I fix it. When a kid wants a book we don’t have, I get it.” He patted his stomach, where the stolen book rested. “I do what I have to so that the kids have what they need.”
Her expression lost most of its ferocity. “You’re a librarian? You don’t look – bookish.”
He smiled again, and she felt her knees weaken. “You’re a lawyer? You don’t look – cut-throat.”
“Fair enough.” She swallowed, unused to having this dry a mouth around other people. She was witty and sharp-tongued, but he made her feel like a school girl again. “I still think you should put it back.”
“You can sue me, if you like.” He reached into his back pocket, grabbed a flier for the library’s summer reading program, and slipped it into her hands. “Just in case you need to serve me, now you know where to find me.”
